 | This biography of a living person contains unreferenced categories (Category:Hugo Award winners).(September 2022) |
Breck Eisner | |
|---|---|
| Born | Michael Breckenridge Eisner December 24, 1970 California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Director |
| Spouse | Georgia Leigh Irwin (m. 2006) |
| Parent(s) | Jane Breckenridge Michael Eisner |
| Family | Eric Eisner (brother) Stacey Bendet (sister-in-law) Sigmund Eisner (great-great-grandfather) |
Michael Breckenridge Eisner (born December 24, 1970) is an American television and film director.
Eisner was born in California, the son of Jane Breckenridge, a business advisor and computer programmer, and Michael Eisner, the former Walt Disney Company chief executive. To avoid confusion with his father, he uses a short version of his middle name/mother's maiden name as his professional first name. [1] His mother is a Unitarian of Scottish and Swedish descent while his father is Jewish. [2]
Eisner attended Harvard High School (now Harvard-Westlake School), Georgetown University, majoring in both English and Theatre, and the University of Southern California's film school where he received a master's degree in film production.
For a directing project at Georgetown, he filmed a contemporary riff on Alice in Wonderland , shooting scenes in the vast empty attic of Healy Hall on the campus, as well as in an abandoned circular trolley-car tunnel under Dupont Circle in Northwest, Washington, D.C. He also directed Shakespeare plays on the campus.
His MFA thesis film, Recon, a tech noir co-written and co-produced by Steven Cantor, stars Peter Gabriel, Elizabeth Peña and Charles Durning. Set in Los Angeles in 2007, Gabriel plays a weary detective who in order to catch a serial killer uses a new experimental technology, Recon, which allows him to see the last living minutes of the killer's victims through their eyes. Gabriel agreed to appear in the film after having been asked to by Cantor who had served with him on a media advisory board. [3] Peña came on board because she wanted to work with Gabriel while Durning had the same agent as Peña. [1] The film, made for a budget of $21,000, was shot in 1994 but completion took until 1996. It screened at the 53rd Venice International Film Festival, the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival, among others.
Eisner had used some of Digital Domain's processors to render images for his film, and the company suggested he meet with some commercial production houses. Thus began his career as a director of commercials, and after only a year-and-a-half, Eisner had directed 14 high-profile spots. His first commercial was Budweiser's Powersurge, which aired during the 1997 Super Bowl. He also took the helm for Rold Gold pretzels' "Comrades" starring Jason Alexander, which featured Pretzel Boy on a rescue mission to the Mir space station. Eisner's two anti-smoking spots for the California Department of Health Services, "Gala Event" and "Funeral", were selected as Best Spots in back-to-back issues of Adweek . In addition, Eisner's "Mad Dog" for Coors's Zima aired during the Seinfeld finale and was chosen by USA Today 's "Ad Meter" as the #1 spot. He has also done commercials for Sony, Sega and Coca-Cola. [4]
Eisner's success in the commercial world opened the door for him to direct the TV film The Invisible Man for the Sci Fi Channel. That led to an episode of DreamWorks Television's mini-series Taken (2002), executive-produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Dakota Fanning.
His first full-length effort was the crime drama Thoughtcrimes (2003), which was produced as a backdoor pilot and went straight to video. His theatrical directorial debut was the film Sahara (2005) starring Matthew McConaughey, Penélope Cruz and William H. Macy. [5] The film is considered one of the biggest financial failures in Hollywood history. [6] [7] [8]
Eisner currently works as a director of film and television. In October 2005, it was announced that Eisner would direct a remake of the classic monster film Creature from the Black Lagoon which was dropped in 2009 for unnamed reasons, and in February 2008, it was announced that he would direct The Crazies , a remake of the film of the same name, released in 2010. [9] In December 2009, it was announced he will direct the remakes of Flash Gordon and The Brood , [10] though he later backed out of the latter. [11] He is rumored to direct the remake of Escape from New York . [12] Eisner is set to direct the film adaptation of the Mark Wheatley comic book Blood of the Innocent . [13] In December 2010, he was in talks to direct the film adaption of the Hasbro board game Ouija. [14]
On March 5, 2013, Eisner was set to direct action fantasy film The Last Witch Hunter by Summit Entertainment based on Cory Goodman's script, [15] Melisa Wallack would re-write the script. [16] Vin Diesel stars as lead with Rose Leslie, Julie Engelbrecht, Michael Caine, Elijah Wood and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson. [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]
In April 2014, Sony Pictures Classics announced that Eisner would direct The Karate Kid sequel starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. [23] In June 2014, Eisner left the project because of scheduling conflicts with The Last Witch Hunter, [24] released in 2015. [25]
In 2006, he married Georgia Leigh Irwin in a ceremony officiated by a Roman Catholic priest and held at her parents' house. [26] Irwin's father is a real estate broker in Palm Springs who developed and sold the resort La Mancha; and her maternal grandfather, Carroll Rosenbloom, was the owner of the Los Angeles Rams and the Baltimore Colts. [26]
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Recon | Yes | Yes | Eisner's MFA thesis film for the University of Southern California |
Director
Executive producer
Actor
| Year | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 | The Auteur Theory | Moshe from the "film" Brooklyn Will Be Ours |
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | The Invisible Man | Episode "Pilot" |
| 2001 | Wilder | Unaired pilot |
| 2002 | Taken | Episode "Jacob and Jesse" |
| 2006 | Beyond | Unaired pilot |
| 2008 | Fear Itself | Episode "The Sacrifice" |
| 2017 | The Brave | Episode "It's All Personal" |
| 2017–2022 | The Expanse | 14 episodes |
Creature from the Black Lagoon is a 1954 American black-and-white 3D monster horror film produced by William Alland and directed by Jack Arnold, from a screenplay by Harry Essex and Arthur Ross and a story by Maurice Zimm. It stars Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Nestor Paiva, and Whit Bissell. The film's plot follows a group of scientists who encounter a piscine amphibious humanoid in the waters of the Amazon; the Creature, also known as the Gill-man, was played by Ben Chapman on land and by Ricou Browning underwater. Produced and distributed by Universal-International, Creature from the Black Lagoon premiered in Detroit on February 12, 1954, and was released on a regional basis, opening on various dates.
Mark Sinclair, known professionally as Vin Diesel, is an American actor and film producer. One of the world's highest-grossing actors, he is best known for portraying Dominic Toretto in the Fast & Furious franchise.
Pitch Black is a 2000 American science fiction action horror film directed by David Twohy and co-written by Twohy and brothers Ken and Jim Wheat from a story conceived by the latter. The film stars Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, and Keith David. Dangerous criminal Riddick (Diesel) is being transported to prison in a spacecraft, and escapes when the spaceship is damaged by comet debris and crash lands on an empty desert planet. When predatory creatures begin attacking the survivors, Riddick joins forces with them to escape the planet.
Martin Campbell is a New Zealand film and television director, based in the United Kingdom. He is best known for his works in the action and thriller film genres, including the James Bond films GoldenEye (1995) and Casino Royale (2006), The Mask of Zorro (1998) and its sequel The Legend of Zorro (2005), Vertical Limit (2000), and The Foreigner (2017). Earlier in his career, he directed the critically-acclaimed BBC drama serial Edge of Darkness (1985), which earned him a British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series. He later directed the 2010 theatrical film adaptation of the serial.
Scott Kosar is an American screenwriter whose films include The Machinist, the 2003 remake of the classic horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror. In June 2006, he was presented with the Distinguished Achievement in Screenwriting Award by the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Kosar was appointed the Hunter/Zakin screenwriting chair at UCLA for 2009–2010.
The Chronicles of Riddick is an American science fiction space Western media franchise created by brothers Ken and Jim Wheat and later continued by writer-director David Twohy. It follows the adventures of antihero character Riddick in the 28th century.
Adam Goldworm is a literary and talent manager at Aperture Entertainment, a boutique management/production company that he founded in March 2009.
xXx: Return of Xander Cage is a 2017 American action thriller film directed by D.J. Caruso and written by F. Scott Frazier. The third installment in the xXx film series and a sequel to both xXx (2002) and xXx: State of the Union (2005), it stars Vin Diesel in the title role along with Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Kris Wu, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Toni Collette, Ariadna Gutiérrez, Hermione Corfield, and Samuel L. Jackson.
The Crazies is a 2010 American science fiction horror film directed by Breck Eisner from a screenplay from Scott Kosar and Ray Wright. The film is a remake of the 1973 film of the same name and stars Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson and Danielle Panabaker. George A. Romero, who wrote and directed the original, served as an executive producer. It is about a fictional Iowa town that becomes afflicted by a biological agent that turns those infected into violent killers. The film was released on February 26, 2010, and grossed $54 million on a $20 million budget. It received mixed reviews according to Metacritic, with the critical summary on Rotten Tomatoes calling the film "tense, nicely shot, and uncommonly intelligent".
The Karate Kid is a 2010 martial arts drama film directed by Harald Zwart and produced by Jerry Weintraub, Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, James Lassiter, and Ken Stovitz, from a screenplay written by Christopher Murphey, based on a story conceived by Robert Mark Kamen, the writer of the first three Karate Kid films. It serves as the fifth film in The Karate Kid franchise, and stars Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan in the lead roles, with Taraji P. Henson, Wenwen Han, Zhenwei Wang, Luke Carberry, Zhensu Wu, Zhiheng Wang, and Yu Rongguang in supporting roles.
Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer are American screenwriters who have collaborated on a number of projects from Thoughtcrimes in 2003 through an adaptation of Brian Freeman's Infinite in 2021.
Riddick is a 2013 science fiction action film written and directed by David Twohy, based on the character Richard B. Riddick by Jim and Ken Wheat. It is the third installment in The Chronicles of Riddick film series and a sequel to both Pitch Black (2000) and The Chronicles of Riddick (2004). Vin Diesel reprises his role as the eponymous character alongside Jordi Mollà, Matt Nable, Katee Sackhoff, Dave Bautista, Bokeem Woodbine, Raoul Trujillo, and Karl Urban. In the film, notorious murderer Riddick is betrayed and left for dead on a desolate planet and uses his instincts to survive. He eventually teams up with mercenaries arriving to capture him to escape from a larger threat.
Aperture Entertainment is a management and production company founded by Adam Goldworm in March 2009.
The Last Witch Hunter is a 2015 American fantasy action film directed by Breck Eisner and written by Cory Goodman, Matt Sazama, and Burk Sharpless, and based on the Dungeons & Dragons campaigns of Vin Diesel's Melkor the Witch-Hunter. The film stars Vin Diesel as an immortal witch hunter who must stop a plague from ravaging the entire world.
Melisa Wallack is an American screenwriter and film director. Wallack and fellow screenwriter Craig Borten were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the 2013 film Dallas Buyers Club.
Ólafur Darri Ólafsson is an Icelandic-American actor, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for Fangavaktin, Children, Trapped and The Deep. On the international stage, he is known for his appearances in Lady Dynamite, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.
Robert Houston Eggers is an American filmmaker and production designer. He is best known for writing and directing the historical horror films The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019), as well as directing and co-writing the historical fiction epic film The Northman (2022). His films are noted for their folkloric and mythological elements, as well as his thorough efforts to ensure historical authenticity.
Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are American writers best known for writing films together. After box office successes like Dracula Untold (2014) and The Last Witch Hunter (2015), Sazama and Sharpless wrote Gods of Egypt (2016), Morbius (2022) and Madame Web (2024), all of which became box office bombs and received negative reception from critics. The duo also wrote a reboot of Lost in Space for Netflix.
Bloodshot is a 2020 American superhero film based on the Valiant Comics character of the same name. It is intended to be the first installment in a series of films set within a Valiant Comics shared cinematic universe. Directed by David S. F. Wilson from a screenplay by Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer, the film stars Vin Diesel in the main role, with Eiza González, Sam Heughan, Toby Kebbell, Lamorne Morris, and Guy Pearce in supporting roles. It follows a soldier who was killed in action, only to be brought back to life with superpowers by an organization that wants to use him as a weapon.
Karate Kid: Legends is an upcoming American martial arts film directed by Jonathan Entwistle and written by Rob Lieber. It is the sixth film in the Karate Kid franchise following The Karate Kid (2010), and stars Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio, both reprising their roles from previous films, with Ben Wang as the main lead alongside Joshua Jackson, Sadie Stanley, Ming-Na Wen, Aramis Knight, and Wyatt Oleff. It is the first film in the series not to be produced by Jerry Weintraub, who died in 2015.
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